In news Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated a ‘smog tower’ in Connaught Place and said similar towers would be built across the city, if results of the current pilot project are satisfactory.
In Jan 2020, the Supreme Court had ordered the Delhi government to build a ‘smog tower’ at Connaught Place by April, 2020, to control air pollution.
What is a Smog Tower?
The smog tower is a 24 metre-high structure fitted with fans and air filters. This is to solve the problem of Air Pollution in Delhi.
It will draw in polluted air from the top and release filtered air near the ground through fans fitted on the sides.
The tower has 40 big fans and 5,000 filters to clean the air.
These are electrostatic air filters that can filter out microparticles, including those that constitute smoke, household dust and pollen, according to the project description.
A Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system has been installed in the tower to collect data and monitor its functioning.
This tower has been established as a pilot project
The tower will take in air from a radius of 1 km. It has a capacity of cleaning 1,000 cubic metres of air per second. It is estimated that the area will see a rapid change in air quality due to this smog tower.
Do you know?
There are different technologies used to clean the air. One uses HEPA filters, (used in indoor air purifiers), which filters PM 2.5 particles.
Another uses electrostatic precipitators that attract PM 2.5 particles and collect them at the base of the tower.
Both would work in closed spaces, but are ineffective in open spaces.
